County To Consider Single Zoning Panel

September 3, 1985|By Rick Tonyan of The Sentinel Staff

The four zoning commissions and the planning board in Volusia County should be scrapped and a single nine-member group created to replace them, County Manager Tom Kelly and a council-appointed committee recommends.

Kelly and Councilman Kurt Massfeller, chairman of a committee formed to investigate problems with land-use regulations, will ask the council Thursday to begin implementing a plan to redesign the planning and zoning processes in the county.

Assistant County Manager Al Sessoms said the council also will be asked to put a two-month moratorium on zoning cases to give the proposed new group, called the Planning and Land Development Regulation Commission, time to organize.

If the rest of the council agrees with Massfeller's recommendations, ordinances to abolish the existing groups and create the new commission will be written and put to a council vote in October, Sessoms said. Then, if the council approves the ordinances, the nine members will be appointed and the group would be organized during November and December.

Current zoning commissioners would finish their cases in October and then the moratorium would be imposed until January, Sessoms said.

Kelly said he hopes current zoning commissions and planning board members will be appointed by the council to the new group. Massfeller's committee recommends that the chairman of the county's board of adjustments, which rules upon variances to zoning regulations, also serve on the commission.

Under the committee proposal, the new group would meet twice a month, once for zoning hearings and again to lay long-range plans for land uses and transportation.

A growth management law approved by the Florida Legislature earlier this year requires counties to have one planning-zoning board. The county for decades has had different zoning commissions for various geographical areas.

There now are four commissions -- one each for the North Peninsula, the Halifax area and west and southeast Volusia -- and a planning board.

Members of the existing groups say they want planning and zoning functions to remain separate. The commissions make recommendations to the council on proposed zoning changes while the board recommends long range plans for growth management.

Herky Huffman, planning board chairman, said he believes combining the work of the commissions and the board will overburden members of the new group. He said he fears the group will have to rely upon the recommendations of county staff members instead of investigating zoning cases and planning methods for themselves.